MySpace a place for friends

HOW THE BOOK HAPPENED
I had been ill since six months old. Infections and colic were the norm, jaundice joined in. At two the hospital had seen me for three days observation. I'd appeared deaf, was self injurious and I was tested for leukemia. I got sent home labeled psychotic in an alcoholic home where my owner was allergic to disability.

Whoever Donna was, gave up the body when she was 2. Willie was there, invisible, but present, a strong, older presence in the room. As I lay underneath the bed in the dark, I remember feeling this presence around me, then allowing this 'ghost' to take charge of my otherwise terrified body. And though I was afraid of its power, somehow, through giving up my own tenancy and moving into its shadows, I felt so safe now. Somehow whatever happened to the body wouldn't matter now, because it wasn't mine.

And Willie was fair, he would allow me back into the body when it was safe, alone, by day, inside of the room, out in my grandparents' shed, or by age 3, running free in the local park we'd wandered off alone to. I had a part time relationship with the body and knew bees and chickens and lemons and blossoms. I knew gravel and the wind, the sparkles in the air and the fluttering of birds in the aviary and the story book records and singles my father had left in my room with a pop up 60s record player. And when people approached, I could now disappear, leaving them progressively to my stony faced protector. I'd wake up later, when it was over.

Carol emerged when I was 4. She was a stranger underneath the tree I was hanging from in a nightdress, baring my all to the world as I swung making a rhythm. It was the same year I found my grandfather dead and my grandmother was shipped away the same week. I would still have their ghosts to keep alive in the abandoned shed, so I wasn't completely alone, but ghosts couldn't help me and the environment demanded that the psychotic, feral, wongo, spastic who lived there had to become a smiling dancing doll and production line replica of a one size normality or go to Kew Cottages, a notorious local Victorian children's home for disturbed children. But though Carol disappeared back through the fence, I found her again, in the mirror, and she was going to be everything me and Willie couldn't be. It'd be twenty years before those two let go of the body enough to allow us to again became one, albeit patchwork, person.

I wrote the first of my four autobiographical works, Nobody Nowhere, on the verge of suicide after a wild half-crazy life with abuse, homelessness, domestic prostitution. I had somehow still maintained the faint fantasy that I could still hope for belonging but found, instead, that when I met real love for the first time I was more terrified of real closeness than I was death.

But I knew I couldn't honorably quit this world, I couldn't truly say I'd tried my hardest if I'd never fully disclosed the nature of my own private world. So I wrote out everything that mattered in my feelings and decided to give it to one child psychiatrist in the hope they could tell me what kind of mad I was and whether there was hope for answers and belonging.

My intention was to then shred it, burn it and leave this world. Instead it was passed on to his colleague, then from her to her publisher, from him to an agent and from there out into the world it became a number one international bestseller.

THE BOOKS PUBLICATION
Nobody Nowhere dramatically changed the treatment, the education and the statistics forever of those with Developmental Differences and opened the doors for worldwide social, political and cultural changes in that field. More than this, Nobody Nowhere was read by 'ordinary people' and those on the peripheries alike, ironically giving a voice to many non-autistic men and women around the world as they felt gripped and swept up, often deeply exposed through my own story to their own deeply hidden, sometimes imprisoning truths.

Commuters on the motorway in Toronto listening to me on the renowned CBS Morningside program of the lovely late Peter Gzowski were so gripped by what they heard they pulled over onto the hard shoulder to listen. The much loved late Peter Jennings flew to London to capture my story for his Person Of The Week show on America's ABC.

Nobody Nowhere sold over half a million copies in 20 languages worldwide, and has been read by millions more. Covering deep social issues far beyond the scope of Autism, it addresses identity and its fragmentation, challenges concepts of sanity and normality in the face of ignorance, brutality and deprivation and brought empathy and an inspiring sense of celebration and hope to mainstream people and solace to a diversity of the most marginalized, disempowered and alone people in society. The film, Nobody Nowhere is for all of these people.

FROM BOOK TO FILM
When a company buys the option to develop a film the first step is finding a writer. In the case of Nobody Nowhere this means finding someone who can envision how to take a story that spans 26 years and takes around 48 hours to read non-stop in a book, and condense that into a film which is around two hours long.

The 26 year span in the book, Nobody Nowhere covers several continents and the main character, Donna, would have to be captured at several different ages. No matter how incredible a book is, if they can't envision converting the power of that book into a film of about 2 hrs length, then they get stuck. We were waiting for someone who could do that successfully.

BECOMING A SCREENWRITER
In the process of reading potential scripts, I mapped the structures and tricks used in scriptwriting. I am a natural systematician. I feel systems intuitively and I map them just like an architect can feel out the structure of a building, an engineer can feel out the mechanisms in a tool, a linguist can map the structure of languages. I mapped the system of scriptwriting. Like with writing, art, sculpture and music, however, I had no idea that I could actually write a film script.

Magically, I encountered a wonderful producer Beverly Nero who picked up the option, and supported my belief I might write the screenplay.

INTO PRE PRODUCTION
Later, producers Norman Stephens and Su Armstrong came on board with the project and the Nobody Nowhere was on the road to development. Next we found our director, a wonderful, talented and award winning Australian director, Garth Davis. After working extensively with Garth, the script was ready to be sent out and we moved into pre-production.

THE SCRIPT
The movie is set in the UK, throughout England and Wales, over to greater Europe and back to Australia and tells the story from Donna's perspective.

The focus of the film is on the year that changed everything, Donna's 26th year, and is an invitation to journey into a depth only touched on in the book.

It was the year I first met 'the Welshman', 'Sion', a soldier with multiple fractures of the soul and more than one battle on his hands who became my real life 'mirror' after which the cold flat glass surface of my best friend, my mirror reflection, could no longer compare.

It was in this year that my Exposure Anxiety brought me to the edge of a breakdown but instead I found my scream through the writing of Nobody Nowhere, the book that came to give a dynamic, human, real-life living face to the word Autism and explode the existing stereotypes laying bare its incredible diversity and ultimately the essential humanness we all share. And what of Carol and Willie? My other 'selves'? Are they in the film? The whole fruit salad is captured in the film but most importantly its not a film about 'behaviour', its a a film about the soul.

Nobody Nowhere was, is and has always been more than 'an autism story'. We are more than the packages we come in and sometimes when we open those packages we surprise ourselves and all those we touch.

WHEN WILL YOU GET TO SEE IT?
The film is still in pre-production, yet to be filmed, but this is the place to join the friends list for updates as soon as they become public. If you would like more information about the film, please join the mailing list for announcements about "Nobody Nowhere" the film.

to visit the Donna Williams website click here
to join my face book page click here
to visit Donna and The Aspinauts click here

REVIEWS OF THE BOOK:

Daniel Goleman, The New York Times Book Review

An extraordinary personal journey...Ms Williams maps a territory that has seemed the most impenetrable of all... A fascinating testimonial to an intelligence undimmed by mental turmoil.

Peter Jennings, ABC World News Tonight

An astounding book...by a woman who has revealed a mysterious world to millions of others.

Los Angeles Times Book Review

As brave a book as you'll ever read. Peter Gzowski, introducing Donna Williams on "Morningside"

A powerful, myth-shattering vision from inside a condition that continues to baffle medical science.

People Magazine

By turns fascinating and harrowing...a riveting autobiography.

Jo Litson, Weekend Review

Superbly written- absorbing, evocative, poetic and deeply disturbing...it is an extraordinary book: compelling, shocking, gut-wrenchingly moving...

Anne Deveson, Sydney Morning Herald

Beautifully written. It left me with a sense of wonder at the resilience and grace of the human spirit.

Professor Anthony Clare

This book is absorbing, disturbing, enriching and it will cause many to revise substantially their views of what it is that constitutes psychological normality.

Women's Journal

... sometimes angry, often witty- Donna Williams' book unveils a brilliant mind blocked by a severe neurological disorder.

Mirabella

A spectaular awakening.

Boston Globe

Remarkable...an eloquent, disturbing account of harrowing transition from severely withdrawn autistic child to college-educated writer.

Jane Asher

...it is essential reading for anyone who has ever pondered the mysteries of self and had the alienating thought that there is no certainty that anyone or anything exists outside of one's own being.

Daily Telegraph

Powerful and unique.

Rosa Sense, Mode

Nobody Nowhere is powerful enough to make one reassess what it means to be human.

Good Housekeeping

Extraordinarily gripping.

Dr Lawrence Bartak MA, PhD, C Psychol, FAPsS, AFBPsS

..A moving and fascinating story of a life still beginning. Nobody Nowhere does us all a great service.

The New York Times Book Review

Donna Williams isn’t just teaching us what it is to be autistic, she is teaching us what it is to be human.

The Globe and Mail

This book deserves every superlative a reviewer can muster.

The New York Times Review of Books

By illuminating her own unique perceptions, she allows us to understand our own perceptions as never before...And oh, can she write.

Those interested in my books, art, music, lectures and consulting work can find them all at www.donnawilliams.net

All those who've ever felt like a Nobody Nowhere.